Tag Archives: dev chat

A couple weeks back we made the decision to move away from the weekly formal devchat session to more of an open “office hours” arrangement. During the time of the chat (16:00 UTC Mondays) at least one team rep will be available in #WordPress-Mobile on Freenode to answer questions.

Agenda

WordPress for iOS update

WordPress for Android update

Google Summer of Code 2014

Anything else

WordPress for Android

2.7 is nearing completion and we’ll probably have a 2.7.1 next week to follow up the release. 2.8 is in the planning stage but we have no major features pinned for that release. @mrroundhill will be passing the baton for Android updates to either @mbiais or @sendhil starting next week.

WordPress for iOS

4.0.1 was submitted to the App Store for review today. It should be in the store by Friday. 4.1 is next on the radar and the code freeze date is 19-APR-2014. Expect a week of testing before submitting to the App Store.

Agenda

WordPress for iOS update

WordPress for Android update

Google Summer of Code 2014

Anything else

WordPress for iOS

WordPress for iOS 4.0 was released to the Apple App Store last week. Native stats was the major new feature and so far the reviews have been positive. 4.0.1 is being prepped for release this Friday 25-MAR-2014 and we’re focused on testing that this week.

WordPress for Android

Testing and bug fixing for 2.7 is still underway. A third QA beta will be released sometime this week. We’re shooting for a Monday (31-MAR-2014) release if all goes well.

Google Summer of Code 2014

Applications for GSoC 2014 were received and now the process of reviewing proposals and asking questions is underway. Review period ends 6-APR-2014.

Agenda

WordPress for Android update

WordPress for iOS update

Google Summer of Code 2014

Anything else

WordPress for Android

Version 2.7 is nearly finished – a beta will go out today to the Google+ group. WP for Android now includes pull-to-refresh, which fits in really well and looks great too – thanks goes to @mbiais. QA has begun officially.

WordPress for iOS

We ended up continuing to test WPiOS 4.0 and submitted it on Friday. At the same time we also started work on 4.0.1 which is a janitorial/cleanup release that will have a code freeze of this Friday. Our testers are still continuing to test 4.0 and if a blocker bug shows up we’ll pull the release and re-submit. 4.0 will feature native stats as the tentpole feature. This week the focus will shift to 4.0.1 where we’ll focus on tackling issues(i’ll clean through the list here shortly).

Agenda

WordPress for iOS update

WordPress for Android update

Google Summer of Code 2014

Moving the dev chat time

Anything else

WordPress for iOS

Last week was spent on QA for the 4.0 release and last minute bug fixes. While native stats are the tentpole feature it’s currently hard for external contributors to test this feature without the release OAuth2 secret. There is an enhancement in the works to properly support developer-created WordPress.com OAuth2 secrets. Submission of release 4.0 to Apple is currently scheduled on Mar 13.

WordPress for Android

Last week was spend on development of features for the 2.7 release. The big features for this release are:

A rewrite of the post/pages lists to remove antiquated code and also add infinite scrolling.

Removing the refresh icons in favor of a new pull-to-refresh feature.

A reimagining of notifications is in the works to show as much content as possible in the native UI’s rather than exiting to a mobile web browser.

Google Summer of Code 2014

Moving the dev chat time

Daylight savings time began on Mar 9 and offset the dev chat by one hour. We put it to a vote and moved the time back one hour to 16:00 UTC.

Anything else

There was a question asked regarding how developers sync up to work on issues outside of the weekly dev chat — the development team is currently very Automattic heavy so we have an ongoing backchat that we use for discussion. “External” contributors mostly use either #WordPress-mobile on Freenode or comment directly on GitHub issues to discuss development.

Next dev chat

The next dev chat will be held at 16:00 UTC on Mar 17th, 2014 in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode.

Agenda

WordPress for iOS – last & this week

WordPress for Android – last & this week

Google Summer of Code 2014

Questions / Discussion

WordPress for iOS

Last week we were all working on the 4.0 update, and officially have called “code freeze” as of this past Saturday. There are still a small number of bug fixes (five-ish) that we’re going to get in early this week. Officially we’re on QA/testing duty until the 13th. That’s when we’re planning on submitting the app to Apple for review. This week will be testing and bug fixes for 4.0.

WordPress for Android

Last week we released two releases. 2.6.2 had a good number of tweaks and fixes in it. 2.6.3 fixed an issue with connecting over SSL. This week work is continuing on 2.7, which is a blend of niceties, nothing totally new.

Google Summer of Code 2014

WordPress.org was accepted as a participating organization in the 2014 Google Summer of Code. A number of potential project ideas for mobile are listed on the Codex. Students wishing to throw ideas past the listed mentors for native mobile development are encouraged to talk via Freenode IRC in #wordpress-gsoc or #wordpress-mobile. Student applications are accepted by Google starting March 10 2014.

iOS Status

The team had a big push on issues in the 4.0 milestone this week with native stats being the tentpole feature. The code freeze for the 4.0 release is still on track for Mar 1st, 2014. There will be 1.5 weeks after the freeze for testing with an estimated release on Mar 12th, 2014.

Android Status

There was a 2.6.1 update to fix important issues which was met with favorable feedback. There were some additional fixes that didn’t make it in so a 2.6.2 update is planned by end of this week.

Note to contributors: The Android group is experimenting with using master rather than develop for work on point releases. x.x.x branches will merge directly in with master and x.x branches will go into develop.

BlackBerry and Windows Phone Repositories

@aerych moved the repos for BlackBerry and Windows Phone to GitHub but there are still a couple things to do such as moving some issues and updating links to the apps on the development sites. This was done to keep things in one place. There is nothing currently in place to mirror to the former SVN repos so treat the GitHub repos as primary.

The new repositories locations are:

https://github.com/wordpress-mobile/WordPress-BlackBerry-Legacy

https://github.com/wordpress-mobile/WordPress-WindowsPhone

Other Platforms

All smaller platforms are in a state of ongoing hiatus. Several lesser usage apps were de-listed this past week to permit more focus to the flagship apps (iOS/Android).

This Week

The iOS team will continue to push towards 4.0 given that the code freeze is on the 1st. There will be some reorganization of the GitHub issues to move lower priority issues into 4.0.1 and 4.1 milestones.

The Android team is planning to ship 2.6.2 and then start working full force on 2.7.

Other Projects: The BlackBerry web site needs updated to point at the new location for the new repository. Tickets for bugs will need to be migrated from Trac to GitHub for both BlackBerry and Windows Phone.

Next Dev Chat

The next dev chat will be held at 17:00 UTC on Mar 3rd, 2014 in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode.

Last week we continued 2.6.1 dev and testing. We found a lot of bugs! The team worked really hard getting them squashed and now 2.6.1 is officially in QA. Release sometime this week is expected.

WP iOS Status

This week we’re continuing full steam on 4.0. We’ve merged in the pull request for native stats and have been testing it out. Number of glitches/improvements have been discovered already but all in all it’s pretty decent. Notifications improvements may be slated for this release as well, but it’s pretty much whatever can be fit into the 4 week cycle, with a heavier amount of testing at the end of that four weeks. Last week 3.9.1 came out and reviews have been more positive. aerych has been helping resolve some issues in the community with the app.

Other plaforms

All other WordPress apps are currently in a holding pattern and active development is on hiatus.

We were fixing bugs reported from the 2.6 release last week and made a lot of progress. The last hurdle is getting translations updated for 2.6.1. We changed a lot of the sentence styling, which means we need new translations for all of the strings we updated. There’s also a nice update to the comments view in the app, thanks to @nbradbury. We also have a discussion going about maybe keeping the nav drawer in the app instead of the tabs.

Last week the team worked pretty hard and fast to get out a hot fix release (3.9.1) which addressed a few bugs that we had quite a few complaints about for 3.9. The three bugs were 1) a bug which caused timezones to be thrown off on posts 2) a bug where longer posts wouldn’t be able to use the link editor and 3) state restoration not working so when users came back to the app at times it defaulted to the reader. All three were fixed quickly for 3.9.1 which was submitted on Friday.

We’ve been testing the release in parallel as well. We kept the release pretty focused as we wanted to just address the issues plaguing our users. I’ve been keeping an eye on Twitter and responding to users as they’ve sent in reports, I just wish I could reply to the app store sometimes :(. The odd thing is the scheduling bug was there before, but complaints only started coming in on 3.9. As far as this week, we’re awaiting 3.9.1 to be released, i’d expect it’ll be released by the middle of this week based on apple’s previous times reviewing the app as far as next steps, i’m consolidating 3.9.2 and 4.0 into one release and the team is going to shift onto 4.0 rather than another point release we’ll have 3 major tentpole features for 4.0, an updated media library, the ability to switch themes in the app, and native stats. a lot of the code for the tentpole features is complete so it should be doable for a 4.0 release

Other plaforms

All other WordPress apps are currently in a holding pattern and active development is on hiatus.

Google Summer of Code 2014

For those interested, WordPress Foundation has applied to be involved in Google’s annual event of getting students involved on coding over the summer. There are a list of potential projects and also confirmed mentors available for the program at https://codex.wordpress.org/GSoC2014. There are three mobile projects in the ideas list currently. Community developers are encouraged to participate in the program by submitting app ideas and becoming a mentor for a student.

Team Reps

Brad @irbrad and Aaron @astralbodies have replaced @aerych and @ievolver as team reps. They’re still sorting out exactly how they’re distributing the duties, but will probably flip flop who runs the devchat every week similar to previous reps. The Make Mobile site needs to be update to reflect the change, and that should be done shortly.

iOS Status

Last week we released 3.9 debuting the app’s new tabbed interface, including lots of optimization and bug fixes.
Since its release we’ve become aware of a handful of bugs including one regarding a post’s publish date, and one where the app forgets the last viewed tab when reopening.
We’re currently focused on getting 3.9.1 released to address these urgent issues and expect to submit to Apple later this week.

Android Status

We released 2.6 last Thursday. There are a handful of bugs (about 10 exceptions) we’re working on for a 2.6.1 release later this week.

Team Rep

Last week we acknowledged we were due to re-up our team reps and we called for volunteers. @irbrad and @astralbodies have both expressed interest and will be taking the reigns as reps for the mobile team going forward. Congrats guys!

This Week

iOS: Complete fixes for 3.9.1 and submit to Apple. Begin work on 3.9.2.
Android: Complete fixes for 2.6.1 and release to the Play store.

Next Dev Chat

The next dev chat will be held at 17:00 UTC on Feb 10 in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode.